Pierluigi Paganini
June 24, 2024
The Lockbit ransomware group announced that it had breached the systems of Federal Reserve of the United States and exfiltrated 33 TB of sensitive data, including “Americans’ banking secrets.”
The Lockbit ransomware group added the Federal Reserve to the list of victims on its Tor data leak site and threatened to leak the stolen data on 25 June, 2024 20:27:10 UTC.
The group hasn’t published any sample of the stolen data.
“Federal banking is the term for the way the Federal Reserve of the United States distributes its money. The Reserve operates twelve banking districts around the country which oversee money distribution within their respective districts. The twelve cities which are home to the Reserve Banks are Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, Dallas, Saint Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and San Francisco.” reads the announcement published by the group on its leak site.
“33 terabytes of juicy banking information containing Americans’ banking secrets.
You better hire another negotiator within 48 hours, and fire this clinical idiot who values Americans’ bank secrecy at $50,000.”
Many experts are skeptical about the criminal group’s announcement. The Federal Reserve is a high-profile target, and a data breach could have serious repercussions. Many believe that the group’s announcement is just for attention.
In early June, the FBI informed victims of LockBit ransomware it had obtained over 7,000 LockBit decryption keys that could allow some of them to decrypt their data.
The FBI is inviting victims of LockBit ransomware to come forward because it has obtained over 7,000 LockBit decryption keys that could allow them to recover their encrypted data for free.
“Additionally, from our ongoing disruption of LockBit, we now have over 7,000 decryption keys and can help victims reclaim their data and get back online.” said Bryan Vorndran, the Assistant Director at the FBI Cyber Division, during the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security. “We are reaching out to known LockBit victims and encouraging anyone who suspects they were a victim to visit our Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.”
Update June 26, 2024: After the claims of the hack, the Tor leak site of Lockbit group is unreachable.
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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ransomware)
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